


Tell Me About It

by MissNessarose



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: College AU, F/F, Fluff, Other characters mentioned - Freeform, Two girls bitching and having a good time, party au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 02:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10630482
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissNessarose/pseuds/MissNessarose
Summary: Pepper gets stuck as the designated driver for Tony (and a few assorted friends). The party sucks. Soda: terrible. Music choice: questionable. Friends she's babysitting: drunker than she's ever seen.The girl in the corner's plenty cute, though.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A friend and I originally threw each other a handful of prompts, to get done within the week and see what the other wrote. (Spoiler: we're lazy and it didn't happen.) However, I managed to crank this piece out (1/3 isn't bad, right?) and was pretty pleased with the outcome. So, enjoy a quick gay oneshot~!

Tony was – not surprisingly – throwing another party (well, _helping_ throw another party, which was just as bad and had just as much potential to produce something hilariously disastrous by the time the sun came back up.) And Pepper knew that _she_ would, of course, be the one cleaning up after it. He took these things too seriously, every time, and always acted like each little detail would _matter_ to a group of young adults that would be too wasted and too far gone to care about them, but Pepper figured that she would let him have his fun.

After all, he probably wouldn't remember much of it the next morning, aside from what embarrassing details would be snapchatted and tweeted and put up on Facebook for the world to see. At least, she told herself, it wasn't actually in _their_ apartment, so she wouldn't be the one to find spare articles of clothing lying around, or come across yet _another_ stranger blacked out in some odd closet. No, it would be somebody else's problem tomorrow morning. Tony was just supplying the alcohol and the music and the guest list, meaning that if anything really went wrong, they couldn't be sued for it.

She could live with that.

"Pep, are you feeling Spice Girls for tonight?" Only half-paying attention, Tony flashed a stack of CDs

towards her. "'Cause I think I'm feeling Spice Girls."

She didn't dignify his request with a response. Maybe if she pretended like she wasn't involved now, she would believe it more at the end of the night, when someone would have definitely jumped naked into the pool out back.

Somehow satisfied with the silence, Tony shrugged and slid the stack behind him with a grin.

"Spice Girls it is."

= = =

She knew the party would end in a complete mess when, at only two hours in, she had seen someone try to _literally_ swing from the chandelier over the stairwell.

Whose house was this, anyhow? (And did it matter, anyway?) The halls were thick with people, grinding and screaming over the beat of music that she could barely make words out of. Pepper sat quietly in a corner of the quietest room, face lit by the screen of her phone as she struggled to focus on her puzzle game, cradling a cup of lukewarm soda in her lap.

Another redheaded girl came to sit beside her in a chair someone had dragged in earlier from the dining room, and Pepper watched her sip some of her drink and wrinkle her nose at it.

"You got the same thing?" she asked ( _shouted_ , really), nodding to her own cup. "The soda here is shit."

"You're telling me." The dull, bored look in her eyes and lack of sober friends was _too_ familiar of a situation. Intrigued, Pepper slid her phone away and tried harder to tune out the music in the background (some Britney Spears song, if she was hearing it right, which she _had_ to question Tony about later because seriously, what the fuck?)

"I know that expression, because it's the one I've had all night. You somebody else's driver, too?"

The other girl finished her drink and crushed the cup in her palm, swallowing with a grimace. "Oh, so we've both been blessed? Not that I'm sure I want to be a part of this – "

As she spoke, something shattered in the background, followed by screaming laughter and more whooping. They both exchanged wary looks, not daring to figure out what the hell _that_ was.

" – after the shit I've already seen tonight. I hate to say it, but someone will _probably_ be arrested or in the hospital by tomorrow, and I usually call it right."

_Not your house, not your problem,_ Pepper reminded herself, breathing something akin to a sigh of relief.

"So, who are you babysitting for the night?" the girl inquired, leaning forward and propping her elbows on her knees.

"The co-host."

"Oh, shit, Stark? I know him." Rolling her eyes, the girl chuckled. "I'm so sorry."

"Yeah, he's a handful. And his two best friends, plus some rich kid and his brother that they convinced to come along, and some, like, high-schooler they snuck in." She counted them off on her nails, really hoping that she wasn't forgetting anyone. "I really need better friends."

The girl beside her nodded knowingly, smirking. "Oh, then we're both in the same boat. I have my asshole best friend to look after, my other friend and his two squad members, and these two foreign kids that said asshole best friend invited? I've honestly met them maybe twice before tonight, so this will definitely be something fondly memorable."

Pepper laughed until it hurt – god, she thought that _she_ had it bad, but this girl had it worse, and oh, how good it felt to bitch about it to someone who _understood_. She wanted to ask the girl's name, but then someone came by and grabbed her hand, their smile blurry with alcohol.

"Nat! Dude, that one guy that isn't wasted yet – the one they've been trying to get drunk all night, t-the one that's like a fucking, like, some kind of fucking _robot_ – he's doing body shots off of that Maximoff girl on the pool table, and – "

"Shit," the girl hissed, one hand moving to massage away the headache that was already building. "That one's mine," she said over her shoulder to Pepper, who grinned.

"Which one?"

Pepper heard her laugh softly over the wail of the music, but then she waded away into the crowd and was gone. Alone again, Pepper reached for her cup and took a drink. She remembered it was uncomfortably lukewarm, and set the cup aside again.

= = =

"...think I'm dying."

"You're fine, Rhodey." Pepper slid up onto the bathroom counter, and crossed her legs. "You've lived through drinking worse before. Also, you should know better than to drink something Tony hands you, especially if he asks you to ' _just trust him on this one'_."

The answer she recieved was another retch into the toilet of...again, whoever's house this was. She still wasn't sure. She could still hear the music from downstairs – a disappointment, because it meant there wasn't anywhere quiet in this god-forsaken place. The door was violently pushed open (not that it was exactly _closed_ , before, but the intrusion was enough to make her try and pull her legs out of the way), and Pepper could only watch as another boy stumbled in, threw aside the shower curtain, and vomited into the bathtub. _Well._

"Funny how we keep meeting up like this."

The girl that trailed behind him, managing with deft hands to pull his expensive-looking jacket off before he managed to get puke on it, glanced up at Pepper with a smirk.

She couldn't help but ask, "Which one is that?"

"The asshole best friend."

"Ah." They made small talk over the thrumming of the floor to the bass of something that sounded like it had far too much dubstep in it to still be considered music, and the occasional retch of one of their wards. Finally, Pepper checked the time on her phone and cringed, hauling Rhodey to his feet despite his protests.

"You'll be fine, trust me. Look, I hate to bail, but it's high time I gathered _my_ drunk toddlers together and got them home before they do something they'll really, really regret."

Nat looked at her, nodded, and gave her a small salute. "Godspeed."

She was halfway out the bathroom door when a sharp ' _Hey, wait'_ got her attention, and Pepper whirled on her heel to meet Nat leaning on the doorframe, offering her a folded slip of paper.

"Oh, thanks. Did I drop something?"

Only when she opened the slip did she realize that a number had been scribbled on it in red ink, and she felt her cheeks redden – _stupid, of course it wasn't something you fucking_ _**dropped –** _ as she slipped it away into her purse.

"You're awfully cute," Nat told her, and Pepper wondered just how long her eyes had been that pretty, or her lips had been – no, no, not here. Got things to do. People to get home. "I could do lunch sometime, if you want to bitch about something else. Of course, I'd wait until you've tucked everyone in to call me."

"Y-Yeah. Yeah, sure."

When she practically climbed through the crowd of people to pull Tony down from the DJ stand, the first thing he noticed was the lipstick smeared into her own, and he made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a howl that made her wish she never knew him.

"That – That's not _yours_ , shit! _Shit_ , Potts got herself a _lady_!"

"C'mon, Tony. Party's over. We're going home."

He protested, and she had to all but drag him out the front door to the luxury car parked in the driveway. Halfway down the front hall, she looked up to see another redhead similarly manhandling a pair of kids – she gripped the forearm of a boy with poorly bleached hair in one arm, and had her other wrapped around the waist of a dark-haired girl who was sobbing erratically, one hand clinging to the hand of a well-dressed man who looked like he had absolutely no place in a party like this.

For a moment, she thought to offer help, but instead laughed to herself, shrugging when Nat's eyes met hers. They shared an understanding look, but went their separate ways.

By five in the morning, Pepper had attended to her wounded and her wasted, and put them all to sleep in various spots in the apartment.

And she had a lunch date for Thursday, too.


End file.
